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last edited on
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Concept Seven:
All members of a service
body bear substantial responsibility for that body's decisions
and should be allowed to fully participate in its
decision-making processes.
The Seventh
concept teaches us that all members of our service teams should
truly participate in the teams’ decision-making processes.
All
contributions count, and maximum involvement yields sound,
sensitive service decisions. We welcome the Sixth Concept’s idea
that individual consciences combine and interact to form a
collective group conscience.
When applied
conscientiously, the seventh concept tends to equalize each
contributing voice in relation to the whole. The seventh concept
also points out the reason we encourage full participation in
our decision-making processes; it is because each person who
helps make the committee’s collective decision on some issue
bears substantial responsibility for his and her individual
decisions.
Full
participation in discussion is essential to good
decision-making. If a committee discovers that full discussion
is frequently limited due to time constraints, it may wish to
consider changing the length or the frequency of its meetings.
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Full discussion, of course,
does not mean unlimited discussion with several members speaking
repeatedly during the discussion. The chairperson may need to
implement discussion tools to help manage the meeting. Some of
these tools including limiting the number of pros and cons which
may be discussed on each issue; calling on each individual only
once or twice during each discussion; or limiting the time any
one individual may speak on a particular issue. If any of these
methods is used, it must be consistently implemented to ensure
fairness, and so that each person present understands the
committee’s protocol for equitable participation.
Although full participation does not necessarily mean that each
person in the room is permitted a vote, a committee’s voting
procedures should always be clearly stated, perhaps in its
guidelines. Being inclusive, however, is always preferable to
being exclusive. Committees often work by consensus and vote
only when consensus is not reached."
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